


As the Mercury Falls

by ossapher



Category: American Revolution RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4479410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ossapher/pseuds/ossapher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander Hamilton travels from St. Croix to New York to Valley Forge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As the Mercury Falls

## I. 88 degrees fahrenheit

“We live in Eden, brother,” says James, lifting his glass to the pub’s sordid interior without a trace of irony. “Why would you leave?”

     How fitting, Alexander thinks. St. Croix, tropical hellhole, as Eden. Eden, where woman and man first fell together. Where the forbidden fruit hung too low, where the Serpent dwelled, where the lion first knew the sharpness of his teeth and devoured the lamb. “You don’t want me to go?”

     James finishes his drink, stands, claps his little brother on the shoulder. “Oh, go if you want, I suppose. You’ll be back here soon enough. How will a runt like you ever keep warm up there?” He smiles crookedly and squeezes Alexander’s shoulder in a failed attempt to take the sting out.  

     “I imagine I’ll manage well enough,” Alexander glares. _He will, he will, he will_.

## II. 82 degrees fahrenheit

“It will be very different in New York,” Cruger says one afternoon, as they are totaling the petty cash and reviewing account books for the month.

     “How?” Alexander asks, hungry for any tales of his future adopted city. “I know it is much larger, and grander, and there are not as many slaves. But those are matters of degree, and I am confident that I may adjust.”

     Cruger laughs at his confidence. “ ‘Matters of degree,’ he says. New York is its own creature; the difference ‘twixt here and there is assuredly a matter of kind. And speaking of degrees, there is the weather. You have never felt real cold before, have you?”

     “I have taken chill with illness. It was unpleasant, I’ll grant, but not insurmountable.”

     “No, no. This is different.”

     “I have gone swimming in the ocean and then climbed out in the wind.”

     “That can be cold. But the cold air that steals in when you are sleeping, that robs you of your very breath, that lasts month in and month out… it is another thing entirely.”

     Alexander lifts an ironical eyebrow at this poetic turn of phrase from a usually very dull man. “I shall keep it in mind.” He is not for an instant dissuaded from his plan. He will be a New Yorker; damn the cold, damn everything.

## III. 57 degrees fahrenheit

He is a New Yorker now. He must behave as one of them—no, more than that: he must become one of them, must hew himself to this city, must breathe its dust, must weep its tears, must never betray himself or his origins.

     He has read enough books to know generally what to expect: the changing and the dropping of leaves, the progressively cooler temperatures, the clouds and the rains and eventually the snows. Generally the books bear him good stead; for example, he does not ask, when he sees a maple tree go from green to living red in the span of a week, what manner of disease it has caught. Nor does he stare in wonder at the enormous vees of birds arrowing south day after day. He curses the geese for nuisances like a local, stuffs newspaper in the cracks around the window of his dormitory, buys coat, hat, scarf, gloves, thick stockings.

     Mornings now, after he swathes himself in wool, he steps out onto the street and breathes in deeply. It is not the sensation of the cold only; there is a crispness and a dryness to the air, an edge to it, that he has not known before. When he inhales, it travels all the way down to the depths of his lungs, and suddenly he is wide awake, as though he had just downed strong coffee.

     The cold does not sink in further: Hamilton is a creature of fire, reveling in this contrasting world. A slow match burns in his soul, wanting only to be touched to fuse.

## IV. 38 degrees fahrenheit

In October he nearly betrays himself.

     Fortunately no-one else is around to see; it is very early on a Saturday morning, and he is pacing the grounds of King’s College as has become his wont. Most of the leaves are only edged with yellow, but this morning is the crispest New York has yet seen in the season. As it happens, he has been praying—or, if not praying, then at least talking to his mother—

     (He does not precisely believe that she is here, but if wishing could raise the dead she would be beside him, here to hear all about New York, about the people he has met and the books he has read and the ideas he has formed, and she would have something at once perceptive and humorous to say about all of them.)

     —and so when the rising sun first catches the silvery cloud spilling from his lips he experiences a start of fear and hope, exquisitely and agonizingly co-mingled.

     A moment later he realizes it is only his own breath, only his own soul, but the tears are running down his face already. Angrily he wipes them away and strides back to the dormitories, where it is warmer and there are no ghosts.

## V. 31 degrees fahrenheit

The door resists more than usual, and when he pushes it open whiteness dazzles his eyes. For a moment he cannot move.

     “In or out!” someone cries from inside the dormitory. “Stop letting in the cold!”

     He steps out, boots crunching, and shuts the door behind him. 

     His city is white and pure and unblemished, beautiful as he has never seen beauty before. He looks, and looks, and looks. 

     At last he finds his word. “Heavenly,” he whispers, and watches his breath go out in a cloud, up and up.

## VI. 27 degrees fahrenheit

“I have heard it said that Hell is cold,” one of Gates’ aides says, by way of making conversation. Hamilton is here in Albany to take Gates’ troops away, so he supposes he cannot expect much better than stilted small talk about the weather. Still, the inaccuracy irks. 

     “It is true that Dante described certain circles of Hell as being cold,” he says, stifling a cough, “but I think you will remember that he did, after all, title the book Inferno.”

     Gates agrees to see him; he stands, grows dizzy, steadies himself. The fever is growing. He is racked with chills. He should rest, he knows, but first he must get those men for Washington.

     He steps inside, seizing Gates’ hand and shaking it firmly. Outside he is stern but reasonable, sympathetic and yet insistent. Inside he is a mess of flame and frost.

## VII. 16 degrees fahrenheit

Laurens is better than a hot water bottle in the night as long as you do not mind a little snoring. Hamilton sleeps like the dead anyway, still recuperating.

     But during the day, when he is not moving about outside with the weak winter sun to warm him—when Washington wants this or that plea to Congress written or this or that letter translated painstakingly into French—he finds himself insurmountably cold. He has kept his uniform as neat as he can, but it is growing threadbare in places, and he is thinner and smaller than most of the men. His cough recurs every time the cold gets down his throat.  

     A pitiful sight he must make (curled up in his chair, teeth chattering, steadying his right hand with the left to keep the quill from shaking), but he does not realize quite how pitiful until Martha Washington wordlessly drapes a heavy quilt over his shoulders.

## VIII. 9 degrees fahrenheit

“You know,” he whispers to John Laurens not expecting a reply, having woken some minutes ago to the sound of a bird whistling and scolding, “if it were not for its horrific effect upon the health and welfare of the men, I think I should almost be grateful for the cold.”

     “How so?” Laurens replies softly, voice thick with sleep. Awake, then.

     “Well, the experience of shared hardship and misery brings them closer together.”

     Hamilton is not facing Laurens, but he can feel his smile against the back of his neck. “Like it did for us.”

     “Indeed. Although I would suggest that their togetherness is perhaps not quite so literal as ours, John.”

     Laurens gives a little snort of laughter, a puff of air warm on Hamilton’s skin. He wraps an arm over his bedmate, tugging him in closer. “Go to sleep, Ham.”

     But a moment later the bird sings again. Hamilton groans and squirms out of bed. “I may as well get up now. Those damnable birds…”

     Laurens’ eyes are still closed, a soft smile on his face. “Those are cardinals, idiot. They are the best news we’ve had all winter.”

     “Oh? And what’s that?”

     “Spring,” Laurens sighs, “It’s almost spring.” 

     Hamilton allows himself to dwell longingly on the subject for a moment, then breaks the pane of ice on their water. He splashes his face with his customary gasp and shudder of horror. There; he is awake enough to face His Excellency, who does not tolerate slowness in his aides, particularly not before he has had his morning coffee.  He towels his face completely dry (a crucial step) before stepping out into the frigid morning. Spring, Laurens says. Well, it is not spring yet. 

     One of the more scientifically-minded officers has hung a mercury thermometer outside his own ramshackle hut, and Hamilton has made a habit of checking it each morning. The mercury is just shy of the number ten. That does not take into account the biting wind, nor the damp. He pulls his coat closer, crossing his arms and folding his hands in as tight as he can, and gasps as the wind finds the gap between his collar and neck. He remembers his brother’s question, at once mocking and concerned: _How will a runt like you ever keep warm up there?_

     He thinks of the fiery restlessness in his soul, of the blanket round his shoulders, of warm breath on his neck, of the hope of spring. “Well, brother,” he says, “I have managed well enough.”


End file.
